Egdon Heath

Egdon Heath is a fictitious area of Thomas Hardy's Wessex inhabited sparsely by the people who cut the furze (gorse) that grows there.

The entire action of Hardy's novel The Return of the Native takes place on Egdon Heath, and it also features in The Mayor of Casterbridge and the short story The Withered Arm (1888).

The ancient round barrows named Rainbarrows, and Rushy Pond, which lie immediately behind Hardy's childhood home, form the centre of the fictional heath.

In The Return of the Native Egdon Heath forms a symbol for the cosmic world of mankind, and is, like man, "slighted and enduring."

Civilization was its enemy: and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation.